Key to a Safe Journey - Introduction to the Life Cycle Management Navigator

Why is a Navigator necessary?

Business activities would have certain impacts on the surrounding environment regardless of the sector or the country, in which a company functions. With the aim of managing such impacts governments, supply-chain actors or stakeholders exert pressure on a companies operations and management. In this way, they are increasingly affecting the (financial) performance of the business. Thus, regardless of the size of a company, its location or annual financial return, the integration of environmental considerations into the daily decision-making is getting more and more important.

The Life Cycle Management Navigator is a capacity building guide and decision support tool specifically designed for corporate decision-makers in small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) worldwide. It aims to assist them to manage the growing demand and expectations in the field of Life Cycle Management. Using the Navigator helps to gain an understanding of the appropriate selection, adoption and usage of today's most important Life Cycle Management tools.

The Navigator aims to:

• empower corporations with an understanding of the beneficial impact Life Cycle Management tools have on the bottom line
• present the basic knowledge about those tools in a comprehensive and understandable fashion
• facilitate corporate decision-makers with an appropriate application of tools.

Who can use the LCMN Handbook? - Captain's Profile

The Life Cycle Management Navigator (LCMN) Handbook is prepared for intermediary parties or "information gatekeepers", positioned between developers of Life Cycle Management concepts and business in order to provide them with guidance for SME training. The target group in particular consist of business consulting firms, environmental advisors, university lecturers, organisations bringing together representatives from industries such as industry associations and work force of the cleaner production centres. In the LCMN Handbook, the target audience is referred to as "the participants".

Where can the LCMN Handbook practically be used? Some hints

The training package material i.e. the handbook can be used in two different trainings:

• in "train-the-trainer" workshops with slight adaptations in the flow of the training material
• in SMEs workshops, where the information gatekeepers can use the material to train managers from SMEs enabling them to use the material for decision-making.

The trainer can adapt the presentations to the specific workshop in order to be responsive to the participants.